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«,\WEUNIVE 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley 

BY 

Thomas  R.  Slicer 


MEMORABILIA. 

Ah,  did  you  once  see  Shelley  plain, 
And  did  he  stop  and  speak  to  you, 

And  did  you  speak  to  him  again  F 
How  strange  it  seems,  and  new  ! 

But  you  were  living  before  that, 

And  also  you  are  living  after; 
And  the  memory  I  started  at — 

My  starting  moves  your  laughter  ! 

I  crossed  a  moor,  with  a  name  of  its  own 
And  a  certain  use  in  the  world,  no  doubt; 

Yet  a  hand'  s-breadth  of  it  shines  alone 
*Mid  the  blank  miles  round  about  : 

For  there  I  picked  up  on  the  heather 
And  there  I  put  inside  my  breast 

A  moulted  feather,  an  eagle-feather  ! 
Well,  I  forget  the  rest. 

Robert  Browning. 


QIEEN    MAB. 


I. 


H,,w   «  (iiul<-fful  i*  iJt'alh, 
D'-a'h  anil  lH^  bmihrr  SUvp  1 

Our.  j«i1p  a*  \  oiulrr  Mtiijug  moon 
U  llti  li('»  of  luflit  b'.uf  ; 

T!i''  oiher,  fo«)  a«  the  mora 

Wlirii  lhronc<l  oil  1.1  fan*  witc 
It  li!u»hPi  oVr  ihf  wurltl: 

Yet  hi't'i  «"  jn^'in^  woiidprful ! 

KatJi  lh*n  tin-  i;lo..in>   I'owff 
\\)i'i5*  rriKn  i«  in  ihf  tainti<l  x-pulchre» 
**«ize*l  "'11  htT  »ihlp*'«  fcoul  ' 
Mult  thpfi  Ihit  [iwrlPiS  form 


Percy  Bysshe  Shelley 

An  Appreciation 
By 

Thomas  R.  Slicer 

Author  of  "The  Great  Affirmations  of  ReHgion" 
and  "  One  World  at  a  Time" 

With  an  Illustrated  Bibliograph}^ 


New  York 

Privately  Printed 

1903 


Copyright,  1903 
By    Charles    P.  Everitt 


«         t 


,  c        •  t  • 


\ 

po 


o 


i 

Q 


I. 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

An  Appreciation 


II- 

i         AN  ILLUSTRATED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

^  of  the  Early  Writings  of 

<^  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 

LU 
(=1 


<3' 


411)89 


OF  THIS  BOOK  15  COPIES  HAVE  BEEN 
PRINTED  ON  IMPERIAL  JAPANESE  VEL- 
LUM, AND  150  COPIES  ON  AMERICAN 
HAND-MADE  PAPER 


/ /-/ /.^>^^^<>^/ 


^^K^e 


PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 

^    ^.    ^• 

TDercy  Bysshe  Shelley  was  a  child  born 
to  nature  at  her  best.  His  eyes  of  wonder 
opened  upon  a  Sussex  summer.  His  beautiful 
mother  and  her  babe  lay  bathed  in  the  light 
of  an  August  day  in  1792;  that  year  and  that 
month  in  which  the  French  Revolution  was 
proclaimed.  Louis  XVI  was  holding  his  last 
levee  on  the  fourth  of  August,  Shelley's  birth- 
day. In  France  the  clergy  were  proscribed, 
and  their  establishments  secularized,  just  as 
the  consciousness  of  this  rebel-angel  began  to 
open  in  the  atmosphere  of  revolt ;  his  cradle 
began  to  rock  as  the  ancient  institutions 
were  feeling  the  swaying  motion  which  tested 

9 


their  foundations  in  the  last  decade  of  the 
Eighteenth  Centur3^ 

He  was  a  child  of  the  privileged  class,  who 
was  to  make  common  cause  with  the  op- 
pressed. He  came  of  an  ancient  lineage;  the 
traditions  of  heroism  were  in  his  family'. 
Edward  Shellc}'  of  Worminghurst  died  in  the 
year  of  the  Spanish  Armada,  1588 ;  Sir 
Richard  Shelley  of  Queen  Mary's  time  was  a 
swordsman,  Grand  Prior  of  the  order  of  St. 
John  of  Jerusalem,  whose  effigy  appears  upon 
medals  struck  in  his  honor  in  Venice.  Another 
Shelley  conspired  against  seminary  priests  in 
England  ;  still  another  was  executed  for  con- 
spiring against  Queen  Elizabeth  in  the  in- 
terest of  Queen  Mary.  But  the  career  of 
knight-errants  had  passed  into  the  erratic 
wandering  of  the  second  generation  before 
Shelle\'''s  birth.  It  seems  rather  a  prosaic 
figure,  that  of  old  Sir  B^^sshe  Shellej',  the 
grandfather  of  the  poet,  to  end  a  line  so 
heroic.  But  he  had  courage  also;  for  did 
he  not  marrv'  two  heiresses  against  the  will 
of  their  families,  and  was  not  his  wit  keen 
and   his  hand   strong,   who    at    twenty-one 

10 


came  home  to  England  from  North  America, 
(Newark,  N.  J.,)  where  he  had  been  born, 
surer  of  building  a  great  fortune  by  a 
judicious  and  gallant  rescue  of  noble  maidens 
from  unwilling  fathers  than  by  any  subjuga- 
tion of  the  virgin  soil  of  the  new  world  ?  A 
hard  old  man  was  this  Sir  Bysshe.  He  lived 
long,  and  gave  his  tough  fibre  to  Sir  Timo- 
thy, Percy's  father,  and  made  much  good 
monej^  and  kept  it,  too, —  so  secure  from  son 
and  grandson  as  to  make  the  latter  say  that 
he  could  only  publish  what  he  wrote  by 
stinting  himself  of  bread. 

Thus  we  see  that  Shelley  came  of  stock 
wath  a  twist  in  the  grain  —  knight-errant  in 
the  remote  past,  contentious,  rebellious  and 
loyal  by  turns,  according  to  the  time  and  the 
stress  of  conscience ;  and  in  later  days  leaping 
all  barriers  to  bear  away  fair  ladies.  Of  Sir 
Bysshe,  his  grandson  declares  that  he  behaved 
ill  to  his  wives,  was  an  atheist,  and  based  his 
hopes  on  annihilation.  But  the  estate  w^as 
entailed  ;  and  the  Baron's  title  would  survive 
the  annihilation  of  him  who  bore  it.  When 
we  find  I^ercy  so  descended,  we  have  a  right 

11 


^  to  expect  that  a  flower  blooming  on  such  a 
stock  will  give  some  token  that  there  has 
been  strange  cross-fertilization  in  preparing 
its  beaut}'  —  its  singular  beauty  —  and  its 
exceptional  tendencies  of  growth. 

Shelley's  mother  was  a  woman  of  Surre^^ 
Elizabeth  Pilfold  was  married  to  Timothy 
Shelley,  the  unrelenting  and  conventionally 
virtuous,  in  the  year  1791.  She  is  described 
as  of  "  rare  beauty,  strong  sense  and  a  strong 
fine  temper."  She  was  not  especially  wise  in 
letters,  and  certainly  failed  to  lay  her  first 
born  on  her  bosom  with  a  pressure  which 
made  him  feel  the  heart  within.  Among  the 
children  Shelley  loved  his  oldest  sister  best, 
and  was  loved  by  her,  until  his  unrestrained 
contempt  for  tradition  made  the  daughter  of 
the  conservative  and  virtuous  Timothy  feel 
to  what  a  hopeless  doom  this  rebel  might  be 
destined.  Doubtless  she  felt,  without  defining 
it,  what  a  later  critic  has  said,  that  he  was 
"a  beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel,  beating  in 
the  void  his  luminous  wings  in  vain." 

The  lad's  loneliness  began  earh'.  It  was 
the    loneliness    of   one  who  was    so    loving 

12 


toward  his  kind,  he  had  no  love  to  give  to 
institutions;  whether  it  was  "fagging"  at 
Eton,  or  the  black  medal  on  a  disobedient 
child's  neck  at  school,  or  marriage,  or  Kings, 
it  was  all  one  to  Shelley,  boy  and  man  alike. 
The  injustice  which  exacted  a  share  of 
life  unwillingh'  bestowed,  must  be  swept 
aside  by  the  free  human  spirit.  Doctor  Dow- 
den  —  Shelle3^'s  best  biographer  —  declares 
th^it  "all  Shelley's  best  poems  are  fragments 
of  a  great  confession.  "  If  this  be  true,  then 
in  Prince  Athanase  we  have  a  pitiful  picture 
of  a  boy's  loneliness  —  a  loneliness  relieved  by 
only  one  friend  Avho  could  advise,  and  another 
w^ho  could  s^-mpathize.  Prince  Athanase  is 
not  to  be  taken  too  literally,  and  j^et  who  can 
doubt  the  self-revelation  of  his  boyhood's  sol- 
itude and  longing  for  love,  w^hich  Shelley 
makes  in  its  lines  : 

Fearless  he  was,  and  scorning  all  disguise, 

What  he  dared  do  or  think,  tho'  men  might  start, 

He  spoke  with  mild  3'et  unaverted  eyes  ; 

*****    and  his  weak  foes 
He  neither  spurned  nor  hated  ;  tho'  with  fell 
And  mortal  hate  their  thousand  voices  rose. 
They  passed  like  aimless  arrows  from  his  ear. 

13 


No  one  can  doubt  the  application  of  those 
Hnes  who  remembers  how  the  quadrangle  at 
Eton  rang  with  the  uproar  of  five  hundred 
boys  shouting  "Mad  Shelley !  Mad  Shelley  !" 
"vShelley!"  "Atheist  vShelley!"  while  the 
slight,  delicate  child  stood  among  them 
trembling  with  rage,  and  helpless  to  resist, 
his  shrill  voice  lifted  in  protest : 

Nor  did  his  heart  or  mind  its  portal  close 
To  those,  or  them,  or  an3'  whom  life's  sphere 
May  comprehend  within  its  wide  array. 

This  was  a  boy  already  possessed  by  that 
spirit  which  knew  it  had  the  power  to  soar, 
but  had  not  yet  learned  to  sing : 

»    «    »    »    *    Xhough  his  lips  did  seem 

Like  reeds  which  quiver  in  impetuous  floods; 
And  thro'  his  sleep,  and  o'er  each  waking  hour. 
Thoughts  after  thoughts,  unresting  multitudes. 

Were  driven  within  him,  by  some  secret  power, 

Which  bade  them  blaze,  and  live  and  roll  afar. 

Like  light  and  sounds,  from  haunted  tower  to  tower 

O'er  castled  mountains  borne  — 

What  was  his  grief,  which  ne'er  in  other  minds 

A  mirror  found  —  he  knew  not,  none  could  know  ; 

But  on  whoe'er  might  question  him  he  turned 

The  light  of  his  frank  eyes,  as  if  to  show 

He  knew  not  of  the  grief  within  that  burned. 

It 


But  asked  forbearance  with  a  mournful  look ; 
Or  spoke  in  words  from  which  none  ever  learned 
The  cause  of  his  disquietude  ;  or  shook 

With  spasms  of  silent  passion,  or  turned  pale: 
Some  said  that  he  was  mad,  others  believed 
That  memories  of  an  antenatal  life 

Made  this,  where  now  he  dwelt,  a  penal  Hell ; 
And  others  said  that  such  m^-sterious  grief 
From  God's  displeasure,  like  a  darkness  fell 

On  souls  like  his,  which  owned  no  higher  law 
Than  love  ;  love  calm,  steadfast,  invincible 
B3'  mortal  fear  or  supernatural  awe. 

The  good  and  kind  friend  of  Shelley's  unde- 
fended loneliness,  who  saved  him  from  a 
mad-house  to  which  his  bewildered  parents 
would  have  sent  him  when  ill  with  fever,  was 
Doctor  Lind.  This  man  aroused  the  reverence 
of  the  bo3^  for  nature's  nn^steries,  and  drew 
to  himself  that  ready  devotion  which  wisdom 
and  love  always  spread  before  him  as  a  sac- 
rament. Where  Shelley  bestowed  his  heart, 
he  did  not  simply  love,  he  worshipped.  He 
speaks  thus  of  Doctor  Lind  : 

Prince  Athanase  had  one  beloved  friend. 
An  old,  old  man,  with  hair  of  silver  white, 
And  lips  where  heavenly  smiles  would  hang  and 
blend 

15 


*^^a(»- 


With  his  wise  words;  and  CA-es  whose  arrowy  light 
Shone  like  the  reflex  of  a  thousand  minds. 

Such  was  Zonoras ;  and  as  dajdight  finds 
One  amaranth  glittering  on  the  path  of  frost, 
When  autumn  nights  have  nipt  all  weaker  kinds, 

Thus  through  his  age,  dark,  cold  and  tempest-tost, 

Shone  truth  upon  Zonoras;  and  he  filled 

From  fountains  pure,  nigh  over  grown  and  lost, 

The  spirit  of  Prince  Athanase,  a  child. 
With  soul-sustaining  songs  of  ancient  lore 
And  philosophic  wisdom,  clear  and  mild. 

This  was  no  transient  influence  in  Shellej^'s 
history,  for  besides  the  sympathy  and  under- 
standing which  brought  him  hght  and 
warmth,  when  dark  and  cold  among  those 
who  made  him  their  sport,  this  wise  old 
scholar  has  made  the  world  his  debtor ;  for, 
certainly,  if  Timothy,  the  stupid,  had  been 
able  to  carry  out  his  purpose  to  put  out  of 
harm's  way  his  son,  supposed  insane,  the 
whole  equilibrium  of  Shelley's  life  would  have 
been  permanently  destroyed.  He  travelled 
so  close  to  the  narrow  boundary  between 
genius  and  madness  that  only  love  saved 
him  all  his  life  long  from  being  lost  to  the 
world.   His  organism  jaelded  to  every  breath. 

16 


He  trembled  as  though  a  si)asm  assailed  him 
when  cither  delight  or  fear  entered  his  mind. 
His  excitability  seemed  at  times  like  hysteria ; 
even  the  knowledge  that  on  the  page  about 
to  be  turned  would  appear  an  illustration  of 
Dante's  great  Epic,  would  cause  his  whole 
person  to  quiver  with  excitement.  When  we 
think  of  the  narrow  and  crumbling  bridge  by 
which  his  fancy  led  him  from  the  real  world 
to  the  world  of  vision,  we  are  not  surprised 
that  he  trembled,  but  that  the  chasm  of  de- 
lirium did  not  engulf  him.  And  yet,  strange- 
ly enough,  there  was  but  scant  infusion  of 
bitterness  in  his  soul.  He  was  not  smitten 
with  the  soul-sickness  which  envenomed 
B3'ron's  life.  Some  self-pity  there  was,  indeed; 
and  who  can  wonder  that  a  nature  dedicat- 
ed to  the  well-being  of  his  fellows  should  feel 
the  waste  of  love  he  poured  out  upon  his 
kind, —  love  which  passed  from  his  soul  like 
a  flood,  but  disappeared,  sinking  in  the 
sand  where  it  flowed.  His  love  w^ent  forth  to 
bless  every  associate  of  his  life — Hogg,  the 
satirical  and  unworthy,  Harriet  Westbrooke, 
insuflicient  for  his  soul's  needs,  the  exacting 

17 


Godwin,  philosopher  and  mart^-r, —  philoso- 
pher by  intention  and  martyr  by  mistake, — 
Miss  Hitchener,  his  associate  in  the  task  of 
reforming  the  world,  in  the  effort  for  Catholic 
emancipation  and  in  other  deeds  of  prowess 
for  justice's  sake — quixotic  schemes  bequeath- 
ed to  Shelley's  blood  and  brain  by  his  remote 
ancestor,  the  ancient  swordsman  of  St.  John. 
All  these  were  the  beneficiaries  of  Shelley's 
generosity  and  the  sharers  of  his  devotion : 
all  took  what  Shelley  could  bestow;  love, 
hospitality  of  house  and  mind,  fortune  — 
money  in  exchange  for  promissory  notes, 
post  obits.  Naught  came  amiss,  and  naught 
came  back ;  for  no  one  ever  thought  of  pay- 
ing Shelley.  He  was  a  fountain  for  their 
thirst ;  he  seemed  repaid  that  their  faces  were 
mirrored  in  his  heart.  He  w^as  loved,  pity- 
ingly by  some,  patronizingly  by  others,  de- 
votedly by  one  or  two ;  but  the  account  was 
never  balanced.  Even  Byron,  past-master  in 
selfishness,  whose  sensual  mind  revelled  in 
scenes  from  w^hich  Shelley  fled  horror-struck, 
was  compelled  to  say  :  "  You  are  all  mistaken 
about  Shelley,  who  was  without  exception 

18 


the  best  and  least  selfish  man  I  ever  knew." 
And  Trelawny  declared:  "  Shelley  loved  every- 
thing better  than  himself."  It  is  absolutely 
certain  Shelley  would  have  left  Byron's  lame- 
ness to  the  secrecy  of  death,  rather  than  yield 
to  the  temptation  which  Trelawny  could  not 
resist.  Love  is  the  key  to  all  that  Shelley 
thought  and  did.  His  sense  of  duty  was 
strong,  and  kept  him  true  to  even  fancied  ob- 
ligations, but  where  love  and  duty  were 
united,  his  devotion  was  an  ecstacy.  He  seems 
to  the  careless  eye  which  regards  him  from  a 
distance,  as  a  creature  of  mere  impulse,  but 
he  was  in  reality  a  nature  given  up  to  unre- 
mitting industry.  His  application  to  a  select- 
ed task  was  unwearied,  so  long  as  the  w^eak 
frame  could  aid  the  unexhausted  mind.  The 
constant  recurrence  of  the  word  "faint"  in 
his  poems  betrays  a  constant  sense  of  weak- 
ness in  the  poet.  How  industriously  he  pur- 
sued his  education  may  be  seen  by  reference 
to  the  list  of  books  given  in  Mary  Shelley's 
diary  as  read  each  year;  and  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  his  early  expulsion  from  Ox- 
ford must  have  made  his  devotion  to  classic 

19 


literature  no  small  labor  in  his  earlier  j^ears. 
This  expulsion  from  Oxford,  and  the  later 
incident  of  his  brief  residence  in  Dublin  to  aid 
the  Irish  cause,  are  times  as  serious  as  death 
with  Shelley ;  but  they  cannot  fail  to  provoke 
a  smile  from  a  less  romantic  generation. 
Neither  his  brief  essay.  The  Necessity  of 
Atheism  —  which  procured  his  expulsion  from 
the  University  —  nor  his  Address  to  the  Irish 
People  can  be  taken  very  seriously  now ;  but 
they  were  as  native  to  his  soul  as  that  best 
product  of  his  ripest  thought,  Prometheus 
Unbound.  "Shelley  at  nineteen  was  pos- 
sessed by  an  inextinguishable  hope  for  the 
world  and  an  enthusiasm  of  humanity, 
which  never  ceased  to  inspire  his  deeds  and 
words.  He  had  a  conviction  that  it  is  in  the 
power  of  every  one,  young  or  old,  to  do  some- 
thing to  bring  nearer  the  world's  Great  Age ; 
that  it  is  the  duty  of  every  one  to  contriliute 
something  to  the  public  good.  He  had  not 
yet  measured  his  own  powers,  and  he  pos- 
sessed something  of  the  self-confidence  of 
youth  and  inexperience,  together  with  that 
faith  in  itself  which  seems  to  be  conferred  on 

20 


genius  to  sustain  it  in  its  contention  with 
the  world.  But  his  confidence  chiefly  arose 
from  his  ardent  beHef  in  certain  truths  or 
doctrines  —  luminousl^^  self-evident  as  they 
appeared  to  him,  3'et  unapprehended  by  the 
mass  of  men  —  truths  or  doctrines  of  which  he 
was  to  be  the  preacher;  and  if  need  be,  the 
martyr."  This  judgment  of  his  latest  bi- 
ographer is  sustained  by  all  the  facts  of 
Shelle3^'s  earlier  years,  and  illustrated  by  all 
his  riper  experience.  For  the  wild  revolt  of 
Queen  Mab  is  not  more  significant  of  a 
nature  in  rebellion  against  the  existing  order, 
than  are  the  prophecies  of  Prometheus 
proof  of  a  faith  in  the  Great  Age  which 
awaits  the  perfecting  of  the  human  race.  Hear 
his  protest  in  Queen  Mah  : 

Whence  thinkest  thou,  kings  and  parasites  arose? 

Whence  that  unnatural  line  of  drones,  who  heap 

Toil  and  unvanquishable  penury 

On  those  who  build  their  palaces,  and  bring 

Their  daily  bread  ?    From  vice,  black,  loathsome  vice; 

From  rapine,  madness,  treachery  and  wrong; 

From  all  that  genders  misery,  and  makes 

Of  earth  this  thorny  wilderness ;  from  lust, 

Revenge  and  murder  .  .  .  And  when  Reason's  voice, 

Loud  as  the  voice  of  nature,  shall  have  waked 

The  nations  ;  and  mankind  perceive  that  vice 

21 


Is  discord,  war,  and  misery ;  that  virtue 
Is  peace,  and  happiness  and  harmony ; 
When  man's  maturer  nature  shall  disdain 
The  playthings  of  its  childhood  ;  kingly  glare 
Will  lose  its  power  to  dazzle  ;  its  authority 
Will  silently  pass  bj' ;  the  gorgeous  throne 
Shall  stand  unnoticed  in  the  regal  hall. 
Fast  falling  to  decaj' ;  whilst  falsehood's  trade 
Shall  be  as  hateful  and  unprofitable 
As  that  of  truth  is  now. 

Professor  Dowden  makes  a  discriminating 
analysis  of  Queen  Mab,  which  goes  to 
prove  the  onward  march  of  the  spirit  of 
prophecy  and  high  hope  in  Shelley : 

''Queen  Mab,  which  is  very  far  from  being  a 
great  poem,  is  also  far  from  being  'villainous 
trash.'  A  certain  moral  shallowness,  indeed, 
makes  it  comparatively  uninteresting,  —  a 
moral  shallowness  arising  from  the  view  of 
evil  as  having  existence  less  in  human  char- 
acter than  in  institutions,  laws,  governments, 
and  generally  in  things  external  to  the  con- 
science and  the  will.  That  Shelley  had  crude 
notions  about  the  history  of  the  world,  the 
origin  of  civil  institutions,  of  religions,  and 
much  beside,  is  obvious  on  the  hastiest  sur- 
vey ;  and  that  he  had  taken  a  one-sided  and 

22 


therefore  flagrantly  unjust  view  of  the  Jewish 
and  the  Christian  reHgions  is  equally  obvious. 
*  *  *  Nevertheless,  the  poem  has  value  even 
when  regarded  as  an  imaginative  setting 
forth  of  important  truths.  Seldom  before  in 
English  poetry  had  the  unity  of  nature  and 
the  universality  of  law  —  the  idea  of  a  cosmos 
— been  expressed  with  more  precision  or  more 
ardent  conviction.  Seldom  before  in  poetry 
had  the  vast  and  ceaseless  flow  of  Being — 
restless  yet  subject  to  a  constant  law  of  evo- 
lution and  development  —  been  so  vividly 
conceived.  Nature,  or  as  Shelley  preferred  to 
say,  the  Spirit  of  Nature,  acting  necessarily, 
and  at  present  producing  indifferently  good 
and  evil,  giving  birth  alike  to  the  hero,  the 
martyr,  the  bigot,  the  tyrant,  poisonous  ser- 
pent and  innocent  lamb,  yet  tends  uncon- 
sciously upward  to  nobler  developments, 
purging  itself  of  what  is  w^eak  and  base. 
Shelley's  spirit,  w^hich  circles  half  mournfully, 
half  exultingly  above  the  ruins  of  the  past, 
which  rises  on  the  wing  and  screams  at  sight 
of  all  the  oppressions  and  frauds  done  under 
the  sun  in  this  our  day,  flies  to  the  future  and 

23 


embraces  it  ^Yith  a  lover's  joy.  He  is  already 
enamoured  of  the  ideal.  His  faith  in  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  better  life  of  man  did  not  die 
away;  it  mspired  the  Hellas  and  Prometheus." 
Now  this  is  not  only  a  clear  and  apprecia- 
tive anal_vsis,  doing  justice  to  Shelley's  right 
direction,  but  it  is  the  judgment  of  one  of 
the  best  English-Literature  scholars  of  our 
time.  It  is  a  judgment  borne  out  by  the 
carefullest  study  of  Queen  Mat,  Laon , 
and  Prometheus.  It  is  a  judgment  illus- 
trated in  Shelley's  private  life  by  tender  min- 
istering to  the  poor ;  by  forgiveness  of  the  in- 
excusable dishonor  of  his  closest  friend ,  Hogg; 
by  his  fidelity  to  Harriet,  even  after  he  was 
convinced  of  her  infidelity  and  repelled  b\'  her 
indifference;  by  his  inexhaustible  reverence  and 
patience  for  Godwin;  by  the  way  in  which 
Byron's  contempt  for  society  and  human 
nature  fell  away  from  Shelley's  soul,  not  able 
to  cling  with  icy  touch  to  that  centre  of  per- 
petual summer.  By  all  these  and  a  thou- 
sand other  tests,  the  faith  of  this  youth  in 
goodness  and  in  -man  as  good,  gave  abun- 
dant proof.     His  poetic  genius  was  ever  in 

24 


debt  to  his  prophetic  spirit  of  truth  and  love. 

Among  Shelley's  contemporaries  in  the 
dawn  of  that  new  poetic  era  to  which  he  be- 
longed, among  the  older  generation,  he  found 
acquaintance  with  Southey.  From  Keswick, 
Southey  writes  a  friend  concerning  Shelley : 

"Here  is  a  man  at  Keswick  who  acts  upon 
me  as  my  own  ghost  would  do.  He  is  just 
what  I  was  in  1794.  His  name  is  Shelley, 
son  to  the  member  for  Shoreham;  with  £6,000 
a  year  entailed  upon  him,  and  as  much  more 
in  his  father's  power  to  cut  off.  Beginning 
with  romances  of  ghosts  and  murder,  and 
with  poetry  at  Eton,  he  passed  at  Oxford 
into  metaphysics ;  printed  half  a  dozen  pages, 
which  he  entitled.  The  Necessity  of  Atheism, 
sent  one  anonj^mouslj^  to  Copleston  —  in  ex- 
pectation, I  suppose,  of  converting  him  ;  was 
expelled  in  consequence;  married  a  girl  of 
seventeen,  after  being  turned  out  of  doors  by 
his  father.  And  here  they  both  are  in  lodg- 
ings, living  upon  £200  a  year,  which  her  father 
allows  them.  He  is  come  to  the  fittest  ph}'- 
sician  in  the  world.  At  present  he  has  got 
to  the  Pantheistic  stage  of  philosophy,  and  in 

25 


the  course  of  a  week  I  expect  he  will  be  a 
Berkele3^an,  for  I  have  put  him  upon  a  course 
of  Berkeley.  It  has  surprised  him  a  good  deal 
to  meet  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  with  a  man 
who  perfectly  understands  him,  and  does  him 
full  justice.  I  tell  him  all  the  difference  between 
us  is,  that  he  is  nineteen  and  I  am  thirty- 
seven  ;  and  I  dare  saj^  it  will  not  be  very  long 
before  I  succeed  in  convincing  him  that  he 
may  be  a  true  philosopher,  and  do  a  great 
deal  of  good  with  £6,000  a  year,— the  thought 
of  which  troubles  him  a  great  deal  more  at 
present  than  ever  the  want  of  six-pence  (for  I 
have  known  such  a  want)  did  me  *  *  *  God 
help  us !  The  world  wants  mending,  though 
he  did  not  set  about  it  exactly  in  the  right 
way." 

This  letter  contains  two  portrait  sketches : 
Southey's,  as  well  as  Shelley's.  No  man  can 
play  the  master  to  so  exceptional  a  pupil 
without  exhibiting  himself.  When  at  length 
the  separation  from  Harriet  came  and  her 
fall  and  suicide  followed,  Southey  presumed 
to  sit  in  judgment  upon  Shelley's  conduct 
and  motives.    The  reply  of  the  younger  man 

26 


is  that  of  one  who  has  a  dignity  born  of  suf- 
fering—  self-restrained  and  much  more  just  in 
all  its  judgments  than  the  words  of  his  ac- 
cuser. When  he  reproaches  Southey  with 
"selecting  a  single  passage  out  of  a  life  not 
only  otherwise  spotless,  but  spent  in  an  im- 
passioned pursuit  of  virtue,  which  looks  like 
a  blot,  merely  because  I  regulated  my  domes- 
tic arrangements  without  deferring  to  the 
notions  of  the  vulgar,  although  I  might  have 
done  so  quite  as  conveniently  had  I  descended 
to  their  base  thought" — we  at  once  believe 
the  statement  in  all  its  particulars  as  truth- 
ful, and  interpret  his  reticence  not  as  guilt, 
but  as  love.  There  is  no  other  passage  in 
this  life  which  can  be  misconstrued :  all  else 
plainly  points  to  that  moment  of  vision 
w^hich  came  to  him  as  a  boy,  and  widened  to 
cover  all  his  days : 

I  do  remember  well  the  hour  which  burst 

My  spirit's  sleep.     A  fresh  Ma3^  dawn  it  was 

When  I  walked  forth  upon  the  glittering  grass, 

And  wept  I  knew  not  why :  until  there  rose 

From  the  near  school-room  voices  that,  alas ! 

Were  but  one  echo  from  a  world  of  woes  — 

The  harsh  and  grating  strife  of  tyrants  and  of  foes. 

27 


And  then  I  clasped  my  hands  and  looked  around : 
But  none  was  near  to  mock  my  streaming  eyes 
Which  poured  their  warm  drops  on  the  sunn^' 

ground, 
So  without  shame  I  spake:   I  will  be  wise 
And  just  and  free,  and  mild  if  in  me  lies 
Such  power;  for  I  grow  weary  to  behold 
The  selfish  and  the  strong  still  tyrannize 
Without  reproach  or  check !     I  then  controlled 
My  tears,  my  heart  grew  calm,  and  I  was  meek 

and  bold. 

Any  discussion  of  Shelley's  life  and  genius, 
or  any  effort  to  set  forth  a  picture  of  his 
beautiful  soul,  must  render  necessar\^  some 
word  concerning  the  separation  from  his 
young  wife  Harriet.  For  the  lovers  of  Shellej^ 
have  been  ever  compelled  to  look  at  his  por- 
trait through  this  obscuring  and  distorting 
veil.  I  can  best  approach  this  subject  by 
presenting  to  you  three  poems  which  belong 
to  this  period,  and  were  published  for  the  first 
time  in  1886.  They  were  taken  by  Professor 
Dowden  from  a  manuscript  volume  in  the 
possession  of  Mr.  Esdail — Harriet's  grandson 
and  lanthe's  son : 

EVENING.    TO  HARRIET. 
O  thou  bright  sun !  beneath  the  dark  blue  line 
Of  western  distance  that  sublime  descendest ; 

28 


And  gleaming  lovelier  as  thy  beams  decline, 

Thy  million  hues  to  every  vapour  lendest, 

And  over  cobweb,  lawn  and  grove  and  stream 

Sheddest  the  liquid  magic  of  thy  light, 

Till  calm  earth,  with  thy  parting  splendor  bright, 

Shows  like  the  vision  of  a  beauteous  dream  ; 

What  gazer  ncjw  with  astronomic  eye 

Could  coldly  count  the  spots  within  thy  sphere  ? 

Such  were  thy  lover,  Harriet,  could  he  i[y 

The  thoughts  of  all  that  makes  his  passion  dear. 

And  turning  senseless  from  thy  warm  caress 

Pick  flaws  in  our  close- woven  happiness. 

TO  lANTHE:  SEPTEMBER,  1813. 

I  love  thee  Baby!  for  thine  own  sweet  sake: 
Those  azure  eyes,  that  faintly  dimpled  cheek. 
Thy  tender  frame  so  eloquently  weak. 
Love  in  the  sternest  heart  of  hate  might  wake; 
But  more  when  o'er  thy  fitful  slumber  bending 
Thy  mother  holds  thee  to  her  wakeful  heart, 
Whilst  love  and  pity  in  her  glances  blending. 
All  that  thy  passive  eyes  can  feel  impart : 
More,  when  some  feeble  lineaments  of  her 
Who  bore  thy  weight  beneath  her  spotless  bosom, 
As  with  deep  love,  I  read  thy  face,  recur ; 
More  dear  art  thou,  O  fair  and  fragile  blossom ; 
Dearest  when  most  thj^  tender  traits  express 
The  image  of  thy  mother's  loveliness." 

The  following  poem  was  found  by  Professor 
Dowden  in  the  manuscript  collection  of  poems 
prepared  by  Shelley  for  publication  in  the  early 
days  of  1813. 

29 


TO  HARRIET:    MAY,  I8H. 
Thy  look  of  love  has  power  to  calm 
The  stormiest  passion  of  my  soul ; 
Thy  gentle  words  are  drops  of  balm 
In  life's  too  bitter  bowl : 
No  grief  is  mine,  but  that  alone 
These  choicest  blessings  I  have  known. 

Harriet!  if  all  who  long  to  live 
In  the  warm  sunshine  of  thine  eye, 
That  price  beyond  all  pain  must  give 
Beneath  thy  scorn  to  die  — 
Then  hear  thy  chosen  own  too  late, 
His  heart  most  worthy  of  thy  hate. 

Be  thou,  then,  one  among  mankind 
Whose  heart  is  harder  not  for  state, 
Thou  only  virtuous,  gentle,  kind 
Amid  a  world  of  hate  ; 
And  by  a  slight  endurance  seal 
A  fellow-being's  lasting  weal. 

For  pale  with  anguish  is  his  cheek, 
His  breath  comes  fast,  his  eyes  are  dim. 
Thy  name  is  struggling  ere  he  speak, 
Weak  is  each  trembling  limb  ; 
In  mercy  let  him  not  endure 
The  misery  of  a  fatal  cure. 

O  trust  for  once  no  erring  guide ! 
Bid  the  remorseless  feeling  flee ; 
'Tis  malice,  'tis  revenge,  'tis  pride, 
'Tis  anj'thing  but  thee  ; 
O  deign  a  noble  pride  to  prove, 
And  pity  if  thou  canst  not  love. 

This     is     one     of    several    pieces     added 

30 


to  that  volume  in  Harriet's  handwriting. 
Professor  Dowden  says:  "In  its  piteous 
appeal  Shelley  deelares  he  has  now  no  grief 
but  one  —  the  grief  of  having  known  and  lost 
his  wife's  love :  if  it  is  the  fate  of  all  who 
would  live  in  the  sunshine  of  her  affection  to 
endure  her  scorn,  then  let  him  be  scorned 
above  the  rest,  for  he  most  of  all  has  desired 
that  sunshine ;  let  not  the  world  and  the  pride 
of  life  harden  her  heart ;  it  is  better  that  she 
should  be  kind  and  gentle ;  if  she  has  some- 
thing to  endure  it  is  not  much,  and  all  her 
husband's  weal  hangs  upon  her  loving  endur- 
ance ;  for,  see  how  pale  and  wildered  anguish 
has  made  him ;  oh !  in  mercy  do  not  cure  his 
malady  by  the  fatal  way  of  condemning  him 
to  exile  beyond  all  hope  or  farther  fear;  oh, 
trust  no  erring  guide  or  unw^ise  counsellor,  no 
false  pride;  rather  learn  that  a  nobler  pride 
may  find  its  satisfaction  in  and  through  love; 
or,  if  love  be  forever  dead,  at  least  let  pity 
survive  in  its  room." 

There  is  no  record  of  any  response  upon 
Harriet's  part  to  this  appeal,  although  she 
copied  and  preserved  the  poem.    Thornton 

31 


Hunt  assures  us  that  she  left  her  husband  of 
her  own  accord.  Shelley  in  his  petition  for 
the  possession  of  her  children  after  her  death 
declared  in  the  Court  of  Chancery :  "  Delicac)' 
forbids  me  to  say  more  than  that  we  were  sep- 
arated by  incurable  dissensions."  The  common 
view  that  Shelley  fell  in  love  with  Mary 
Godwin  and  deserted  his  wife  and  children  in 
sheer  passion  has  no  shred  of  proof  to  sustain 
it.  In  these  "incurable  dissensions"  EHza 
Westbrooke,  who  had  attached  herself  to  the 
household  as  an  insatiable  leech,  bore  her 
part.  Shelley  writes,  just  before  his  London 
marriage  with  Harriet  in  1814,  concerning 
her  sister  Eliza;  "I  certainly  hate  her  with  all 
my  heart  and  soul.  It  is  a  sight  which  awak- 
ens an  inexpressible  sensation  of  disgust  and 
horror  to  see  her  caress  my  poor  little  lanthe. 
*  *  *  I  sometimes  feel  faint  with  the  fatigue 
of  checking  the  overflowing  of  my  unbounded 
abhorrence  for  this  miserable  wretch.  But 
she  is  no  more  than  a  blind  and  loathsome 
worm  which  cannot  see  to  sting." 

I  have  quoted  this  passage  not  only  for  the 
bearing  it  may  seem  to  have  upon  Shelley's 

32 


miser}',  but  because  it  is  not  the  feeling  Shellej^ 
earlier  felt  for  her  and  because  it  stands 
almost  alone  in  all  the  multitude  of  beautiful 
things  he  has  written,  as  an  expression  of 
personal  hate.  Only  one  other  person  seems 
to  have  affected  him  thus;  that  was  Mrs. 
Godwin,  the  second— Claire  Clairmont's  unen- 
durable mother.  Shelley  sa^'s  that  when  he 
dines  at  Godwin's  and  sees  Mrs.  Godwin  at 
table,  he  finds  himself  "leaning  back  in  his 
chair  and  languishing  into  hate."  She  must 
have  been  worthy  to  excite  such  an  emotion, 
if  the  record  of  her  influence  upon  Fanny 
Imlay,  Mary  Shelley  and  her  own  daughter 
Claire  may  be  trusted.  From  the  moment 
she  began  to  court  her  neighbor,  William 
Godwin,  from  her  window,  with  the  exclam- 
ation "Can  it  be  that  I  behold  the  immortal 
Godwin!"  (to  which  description  Godwin 
seems  to  have  assented,)  her  whole  career  was 
self-seeking  and  untrustworthy.  She  appears 
in  the  history  of  these  lives  as  a  malignant 
influence,  a  thoroughly  respectable  woman  of 
the  worst  type.  But  her  effect  upon  Shelley 
w^as  not   traceable   in  any  behavior  of  his 

33 


toward  her.  It  was  however,  perhaps  due 
to  her  want  of  sympathy  with  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft's  daughter  that  Shelley  was  given 
opportunity  for  placing  himself  in  the  danger- 
ous companionship  of  this  fascinating  girl. 
He  had  not  yet  broken  finally  with  Harriet ; 
although  the  breach  between  them  seemed 
beyond  remedy,  when  a  visit  to  Godwin  re- 
vealed the  presence  in  that  household  of  a 
girl  whose  keen  intellect,  enthusiasm  and  love 
of  "Intellectual  Beauty"  were  no  less  than 
his.  It  was  her  custom  to  take  her  book  or 
work  and  go  to  sit  by  her  mother's  grave  in 
the  churchyard  of  old  St.  Pancras, —  a  place 
instinct  with  the  presence  of  the  mother  she 
had  never  know^n,  but  whose  name  and  in- 
fluence were  to  her  a  realit}^  in  the  world  of 
books  and  in  the  vindication  of  her  own  free- 
dom from  undue  restraint.  She  had  a  strange 
training,  this  girl  of  sixteen,  delicate,  fair  and 
finely  strung.  Had  she  not  been  the  free  soul 
she  was,  the  freedom  Godwin  proclaimed 
must  have  been  an  incentive  to  uncontrol.  It 
is  not  thus  a  matter  of  surprise,  that  these 
two, —  the  one  a  child,  Shelley  scarcely  more 

34 


than  a  boy,  should  have  compared  their 
sorrows  under  the  willow  in  the  St.  Pancras 
Churchyard,  and  have  come  to  feel  that  their 
loneliness  and  separation  from  all  comfort 
decreed  that  they  should  be  a  solace,  each  to 
the  other's  grief.  In  Mary  Shelley's  words  it 
is  recorded:  "His  anguish,  his  isolation,  his 
difference  from  other  men,  his  gifts  of  genius 
and  eloquent  enthusiasm,  made  a  deep  im- 
pression on  Godwin's  daughter,  Mary  *  *  * 
who  had  been  accustomed  to  hear  Shelley 
spoken  of  as  something  rare  and  strange. 
To  her  as  they  met  one  eventful  day  in  St. 
Pancras  Churchyard  by  her  mother's  grave, 
Bysshe,  in  burning  words  poured  forth  the 
tale  of  his  wild  past  — how  he  had  suffered, 
how  he  had  been  misled,  and  how  if  support- 
ed by  her  love,  he  hoped  in  future  years  to 
enroll  his  name  with  the  wise  and  good,  who 
had  done  battle  for  their  fellow-men,  and 
been  true,  through  all  adverse  storms,  to  the 
cause  of  humanity.  Unhesitatingly  she  placed 
her  hand  in  his,  and  linked  her  fortune  with 
his  own ;  and  most  truthfully,  as  the  remain- 
ing portions  of  these  memorials  will  prove, 

35 


was  the  pledge  of  both  redeemed.  The  theo- 
ries in  which  the  daughter  of  the  authors 
of  Political  Justice^  and  The  Rights  of 
Woman,  had  been  educated  spared  her  from 
any  conflict  between  her  duty  and  her  affec- 
tion. For  she  was  the  child  of  parents  whose 
writings  had  had  for  their  object  to  prove 
that  marriage  was  one  among  the  many  in- 
stitutions which  a  new  era  in  the  history  of 
mankind  was  about  to  sweep  away.  By  her 
father,  whom  she  loved,  by  the  writings  of 
her  mother,  whom  she  had  been  taught  to 
venerate  —  these  doctrines  had  been  rendered 
familiar  to  her  mind.  It  was  therefore  natural 
that  she  should  listen  to  the  dictates  of  her 
own  heart,  and  willingly  unite  her  fate  with 
one  who  was  so  worthy  of  her  love."  This 
is  the  whole  story  —  whether  the  personality 
of  Shelley  or  the  education  of  both  be  con- 
sidered ;  and  when  to  this  is  added  the  step- 
mother, and  the  questionable  influence  of 
Claire  Clairmont,  Byron's  mistress,  we  need 
search  no  further  for  the  causes  which  set 
these  two,  wayward  and  rash,  but  strangely 
gifted    creatures    upon    a    path    of  rebellion 

36 


against  the  conventions  of  a  dull  world, 
and  the  experience  of  a  world,  which  is  often 
wisest  when  dull. 

"Rare  and  strange"  indeed  was  Shelley! 
Literature  shows  no  counterpart.  Of  some 
what  the  same  make,  but  of  different  finish, 
more  fragile  if  not  more  rare,  were  Keats  and 
Chatterton.  They  seemed  mortal ;  that  Shel- 
ley never  seemed  —  he  was  elfish  rather.  It 
was  to  Mary  as  though  she  had  stooped  to 
pluck  a  rose  that  grew  in  her  path,  and  found 
that  it  was  a  rose,  white  once  and  wet  with 
dew,  but  now  crimson  from  some  w^ound  its 
beauty  hid ;  it  was  as  though  a  bird  had 
flow'n  chilled  and  trembling  to  her  bosom, 
and  had  straighway  begun  a  plaintive  song 
against  her  heart.    This  was  the  song: 

Mine  e3'es  were  dim  with  tears  unshed ; 
Yes,  I  was  firm — thus  wert  not  thou ; 
My  baffled  looks  did  fear  yet  dread 
To  meet  thy  looks — I  could  not  know 
How  anxiously  they  sought  to  shine 
With  soothing  pity  upon  mine. 

To  sit  and  curb  the  soul's  mute  rage 
Which  preys  upon  itself  alone ; 
To  curse  the  life  which  is  the  cage 
Of  fettered  grief  that  dares  not  groan, 

37 


^'41089 


Hiding  from  many  a  careless  eye 
The  scorned  load  of  aj^ony. 

Upon  my  heart  thy  accents  sweet 

Of  peace  and  pity  fell  like  dew 

On  flowers  half  dead  ; — thy  lips  did  meet 

Mine  tremblingly- ;  thy  dark  eyes  threw 

Their  soft  pursuasion  on  my  brain, 

Charming  away  its  dream  of  pain. 

We  are  not  happy  sweet !    Our  state 
Is  strange  and  full  of  d()ul)t  and  fear; 
More  need  of  words  that  ills  abate  ; — 
Reserve  or  censure  come  not  near 
Our  sacred  friendship,  lest  there  be 
No  solace  left  for  thee  and  me. 

Shelley  was  wretched,  but  comforted  even 
while  wretched.  His  was  a  nature  enamoured 
of  loveliness,  pursuing  as  in  a  trance  some  ideal 
beauty  of  mind  and  form  ;  as  he  says,  "Anti- 
gone," seen  of  him  "in  some  previous  state  of 
being."  He  was  of  all  modern  poets  most 
Greek  in  sympathy  with  nature,  most  full  of 
passion,  most  free  from  the  gross  infusion  of 
passion.  He  was  not  the  inflammable  creature 
Matthew  Arnold  makes  him  out  to  be.  His 
w^as  a  flame  electric,  most  clear,  most  bright, 
but  giving  forth  no  heat  of  common  fire,  nor 
corrupting  the  atmosphere  in  which  it 
burned.    The  second  crisis  of  his  life  was  just 

38 


past,  in  which  he  had  worshipped  at  the  shrine 
of  Intellectual  Beauty  —  a  worship  which  he 
celebrates  in  a  matchless  Hymn. 

I  vowed  that  I  would  dedicate  1113'  powers 
To  thee  and  thine — have  I  not  kept  the  vow  ? 
With  beating  heart  and  streaming  eyes  even  now 
I  call  the  phantoms  of  a  thousand  hours 
Each  from  his  voiceless  grave :  they  have  in  visioned 
bowers 

Of  studious  zeal  or  love's  delight 

Outwatched  with  me  the  envious  night — 
They  know  that  never  joy  illumed  my  brow 

Unlinked  with  hope  that  thou  wouldst  free 

This  world  from  its  dark  slavery, 

That  thou — O  awful  Loveliness, 
Wouldst  give  whate'er  these  words  cannot  express. 

The  day  becomes  more  solemn  and  serene 
When  noon  is  past — there  is  a  harmony 
In  autumn,  and  a  lustre  in  its  sky, 
Which  thro'  the  summer  is  not  heard  or  seen 
As  if  it  could  not  be,  as  if  it  had  not  been ! 

Thus  let  thy  power,  which  like  the  truth 

Of  Nature  on  my  passive  youth 
Descended,  to  my  onward  life  suppl}' 
Its  calm — to  one  who  worships  thee, 
And  every  form  containing  thee, 
Whom,  Spirit  fair,  thy  spells  did  bind 
To  fear  himself,  and  love  all  human  kind. 

Here  again  Shelley  shows  the  absorbing 
passion  for  truth,  and  for  all  its  beautiful 
manifestations.   He  seemed  to  have  the  power 

39 


to  realize  abstract  truth  only  in  concrete  form, 
—  it  was  the  Greek  temper  again.  His  imag- 
ery is  sometimes  bold  beyond  the  demands  of 
Art,  but  never  gross.  But  there  was  in  it  that 
intensitj^  also  which  caused  him  to  lavish  all  his 
heart  on  each  object,  and  he  seems  to  forget 
for  the  time  being  that  any  other  had  a  mo- 
mentary claim  upon  him.  It  was  thus  his 
nature  showed  itself  in  commonest  things. 
He  would  lie  in  his  boat  and  study  effects  of 
light  and  color  on  sea  and  sky,  unmindful  of 
the  rudder  entrusted  to  his  care.  His  life 
lacked  guiding,  because  his  eyes  w^ere  onlook- 
ing,  and  he  forgot  that  the  furthest  flight 
of  the  affections  must  end  at  home. 

The  influences  which  wrought  upon  Shel- 
ley's mind  were  varied.  He  belonged  to  a 
remarkable  group  of  men  who  made  famous 
the  last  years  of  the  Eighteenth  Century 
and  the  first  quarter  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen- 
tury,-Scott,  Coleridge,  Southey,  Leigh  Hunt, 
Byron,  Charles  Lamb  and  Keats.  With  all 
these  excepting  Scott,  Shelley  had  relations 
more  or  less  intimate.  All  seem  to  have 
been  a  delight   to  him  except  Southej'^  and 

40 


Byron,  and  even  these  gained  something 
from  him.  Southey  gained  a  fresh  accession 
of  self-conceit;  tind  Byron's  poems  of  the 
Lake  Leman  period  are  penetrated  by  the 
influence  of  Shelley's  more  delicate  intelli- 
gence. They  skirted  the  lake  together  with 
Rousseau  in  hand,  £ind  out  of  their  inter- 
change of  thought  came  Shelley's  Julian, 
and  Count  Maddolo,  and  Byron's  Childe 
Harold  and  Prisoner  of  Chillon. 

But,  one  influence  wrought  more  than  all 
others  —  an  influence  malign,  it  seems,  an  in- 
fluence of  unadulterated  evil.  In  the  world  oi 
morals  this  influence  is  called  a  rebellion  from 
the  sacraments  of  the  heart ;  in  government 
it  is  known  as  anarchy ;  in  society  as  personal 
freedom  in  its  most  selfish  form ;  in  literature 
it  is  known  by  the  name  of— William  Godwin. 
Professor  Dowden's  estimate  of  Godwin 
seem  to  me  only  partly  true.     He  says ; 

"A  lyrical  nature  trying  to  steady  its  ad- 
vance by  revolutionary  abstractions  —  such 
was  Shelley  *  *  *  Godwin's  philosophy 
brought  Shelley  something  w^hich  his  imag- 
ination   demanded,    and    something    which 

41 


was  needful  to  his  character.  Godwin,  with 
his  abstract  principles,  made  a  clean  sweep 
of  tradition  and  all  the  accumulated  trea- 
sures, and  all  the  accumulated  lumber  of  the 
past;  these  same  principles  received  as  the 
foundation  of  a  new  human  society  en- 
throned boundless  hopes  for  the  future  *  *  * 
Godwin's  philosophy,  while  it  was  on  the 
one  hand  a  chariot  from  which  Shelley's 
wild-eyed  hopes  could  lean  forward  to  drink 
the  wind  of  their  own  speed,  was  on  the 
other  hand  an  intellectual  counterpoise  to 
his  excitable  temper." 

But  little  note  is  now  made  of  William 
Godwinj  except  that  he  married  Mary  Woll- 
stonecraft  and  was  the  father  of  Mary 
Shelley.  He  would  have  been  a  clod  indeed 
who  had  not  loved  Mary  Wollstonecraft, 
and  beyond  the  parentage  and  shelter  of 
home,  the  influence  of  Godwin  on  Mary 
Shelley's  life  seems  a  blight  and  a  distress. 

Shelley  was  still  a  boy  when  there  fell  in  his 
way  Godwin's  revolutionary  treatise  entitled, 
Political  Justice.  It  is  difhcult  for  us  to 
conceive  how  this  work  could  have  made  the 

42 


impression  it  did  in  England.  It  will  aid 
us  in  this  conception  if  we  call  to  mind 
the  state  of  English  politics  and  society, 
and  look  toward  France,  where  from  the 
English  shores  could  be  seen  the  ascend- 
ing smoke  of  a  growing  conflagration.  This 
was  the  period  in  which  the  Georges  inflicted 
their  rule  upon  English  government  und  their 
manners  upon  English  society — the  period 
when  Lord  Castlereagh  was  the  "power  be- 
hind the  throne"  and  Lord  Eldon  was  Chan- 
cellor. Of  this  Lord  Eldon,  Sidney  Smith, 
who  had  a  good  word  for  everybody,  could 
say  only  evil.  He  calls  him  "the  most  bigoted, 
heartless  and  mischievous  of  human  beings, 
who  passed  a  long  life  in  perpetrating  all 
sorts  of  abuses,  and  in  making  money  of 
them."  It  may  be  imagined  how  a  rebel  like 
Godwin  would  write  such  a  book  as  Political 
Justice,  and  with  what  execration  it  would 
be  received  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
with  what  admiration  the  minds  in  revolt 
would  hail  it.  It  is  not  difficult  to  believe 
that  it  seemed  to  Shelley  an  oracle  of  wis- 
dom; and  that  when  he  discovered  that  its 

43 


author  was  still  liv'ing,  he  should  write  that 
remarkable  letter  which  is  the  begining  of  a* 
relation  in  which  Shelley's  consistent  fidelity 
was  matched  by  Godwin's  consistent  impe- 
cuniosity. 

Shelley's  susceptibility  to  such  an  influence 
has  been  thus  stated  :  "Shelley's  second  letter 
[to  Godwin]  which  reviews  his  past  life  is  of 
much  biographictil  interest,  but  one  must 
bear  in  mind  that  the  writer,  who  had  only  a 
faint  interest  in  the  history  of  nations,  was 
one  of  those  men  for  whom  the  hard  outline 
of  facts  in  their  own  individual  history  has 
little  fixity;  whose  footsteps  are  forever  fol- 
lowed and  overflowed  by  the  waves  of 
oblivion ;  who  remember  with  extraordinary 
tenacity  the  sentiment  of  times  and  places, 
but  lose  the  framework  of  circumstance  in 
which  the  sentiment  was  set ;  and  who  in  re- 
constructing an  image  of  the  past,  often  un- 
consciously supply  links  and  lines  ujjon  the 
suggestion  of  that  sentiment  or  emotion 
which  is  for  them  the  essential  reality  *  *  * 
For  them  their  lives  are  a  train  of  emotions 
and  ideas  rather  than  of  events ;   and  in  re- 

44 


calling  foregone  events  an  involuntary  in- 
stinct is  at  work,  unconsciously  adapting 
circumstances  to  feelings  by  the  aid  of  a  win- 
nowing wind  of  desire,  astir  amid  the  mobile 
cloud-land  of  the  past." 

This  is  a  truthful  and  very  keen  discernment 
of  the  method  of  Shelley's  mind.  How  this 
"muddy  pool"  of  Godwin's  treatise  upon 
reason  gave  forth,  in  Shelley's  thinking,  a 
luminous  and  beautiful  mist,  may  be  seen  not 
only  in  the  crude  and  turbulent  rebellions  oi 
Queen  Mah,  but  in  the  sublimer  and  better 
considered  utterances  of  Prometheus.  "Some- 
how Shelley  sought  and  found  comfort  under 
his  general  sense  that  everything  is  but  the 
baseless  fabric  of  a  vision  —  a  verj^  uncom- 
fortable vision  it  seems  to  us  made  up  ot 
pain  and  grief"     It  pleased  his  fancy,  that  — 

Life  like  a  dome  ol  many  colored  glass 
Stains  the  white  radiance  of  Eternity. 

Thus  was  a  mental  contact  established  be- 
tween Shelley,  the  radient  dweller  in  eternal 
verities,  and  Godwin,  this  juggler  with  un- 
realities. "Godwin,"  said  Northcote  to  Haz- 
litt,  "is  a  profligate  in  theorj',  and  a  bigot 

45 


in  conduct.  He  does  not  seem  at  all  to  prac- 
tice what  he  preaches,  though  this  does  not 
appear  to  avail  him  anj'thing."  "Yes,"  re- 
plied riazlitt,  "he  writes  against  himself.  He 
has  written  against  matrimony  and  has  been 
twice  married.  He  has  scouted  all  the  com- 
mon-place duties,  and  yet  he  is  a  good  hus- 
band and  a  kind  father.  He  is  a  strange 
composition  of  contrary'  qualities.  He  is  a 
cold  formalist,  and  full  of  ardour  and  en- 
thusiasm of  mind ;  dealing  in  magnificent 
projects  and  petty  cavils ;  naturalh'  dull,  and 
brilliant  by  dint  of  study;  pedantic  and  play- 
ful; a  dry  logician  and  a  writer  of  romances." 
Talfourd  declares,  Godwin  "was  a  man 
of  two  beings  —  which  held  little  discourse 
with  each  other."  Shelley  also  was  two 
beings  —  which  held  constant  discourse  with 
each  other — he  was  a  poet  bathed  in  the 
sun  of  a  new  dawn ;  he  was  a  reverent  scep- 
tic seeking  to  account  for  the  nature  and 
grow^th  of  all  things  under  the  sun.  He  took 
Godwin's  logic  and  passed  it  through  the 
alembic  of  his  ardent  soul  and  it  hovered 
about  him  a  luminous  cloud;  —  he  took  God- 

46 


win's  social  heresies  and  laid  them  against 
his  heart,  and  fiuickencd  them  to  a  pure  ex- 
perience by  the  love  his  heart  supplied.  His 
subtle  alchemy  extracted  whatever  gold  was 
in  this  mine  of  Godwin,  and  the  world  has 
been  raking  over  the  refuse  from  his  furnace 
ever  since.  Shelley  was  consumed  in  this 
social,  personal  passion  for  truth;  but  as  in 
the  fire  which  burned  him  to  ashes  on  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean,  to  one  who  can 
look  into  the  white  heat,  there  will  be  dis- 
covered a  heart  still  whole. 

It  remains  to  speak  briefly  of  Shelley  as  a 
poet  simply.  No  one  can  fail  to  expect  song 
who  looks  into  the  eyes  of  this  singer,  as  he 
gazes  with  melancholy  tenderness  out  of  Miss 
Curran's  portrait  of  him.  His  throat,  round 
and  white  as  a  girl's,  seems  ready  to  pulsate 
with  a  rush  of  melody.  His  nearest  friend 
says  of  him  that  he  had  "a  marv^ellous  gentle- 
ness of  disposition,"  therefore,  say  we,  he  will 
sing  us  sonnets  and  melodious  ballads ;  but^ 
says  the  same  friend,  there  "was  great  audac- 
ity of  intellect."  Ah,  say  we,  then  he  will 
give  us  an  epic  or  a  drama  when  he  is  aroused 

47 


— a  battle  song  will  he  sing  amid  the  crash  of 
outworn  systems.  But  he  had  "also  a  re- 
markable and  earnest  spirit."  Let  the  elegy 
for  Keats  — early  dead  — say  how  true  this 
earnest  spirit  was,  how  unselfish,  free  from 
jealousy  and  all  envy  of  this  singer  set  free 
from  the  frail  cage  of  human  life,  to  seek  that 
empirean  whither  Shellej^  turned  his  constant 
gaze. 

Let  me  reset  here  a  gem  taken  from  the  vast 
wealth  of  Shelley's  verse,  I  have  spoken  of 
him  as  a  singer, —  this  was  the  pre-eminent 
qualitj^  of  his  gift.  Sometimes  the  song  is  an 
ecstacy  ofjoy,  and  sometimes  the  unutterable 
passion  of  grief;  sometimes  rhapsodj^  with 
which  our  slow  minds  scarce  keep  pace.  Let 
me  recall  this  song;  we  think  oftenest  of 
The  Cloud  and  The  Skylark  and  of  this,  when 
we  think  of  Shelley,  as  a  singer : 

My  soul  is  an  enchanted  boat, 

Which  Hke  a  sleeping  swan  doth  float 

Upon  the  silver  waves  of  thj'  sweet  singing; 

And  thine  doth  like  an  angel  sit 

Beside  a  helm  conducting  it, 

Whilst  all  the  winds  with  melody  are  ringing. 

It  seems  to  float  ever,  forever. 

Upon  that  many  winding  river, 

48 


Between  mountains,  woods,  abysses, 

A  paradise  of  wildernesses ! 

Till,  like  one  in  slunil>er  bound, 

Borne  to  the  ocean,  1  float  down  around. 

Into  a  sea  profound,  of  ever-spreadinj^  sound. 

Contrast  the  liquid  music  of  that  immortal 
verse  with  this  snarl,  of  the  Third  Fury- 
answering  Prometheus'  word :  "I  weigh  not 
what  ye  do,  but  what  ye  suffer,  being  evil:" 

We  will  live  through  thee,  one  by  one, 

Like  animal  life,  and  though  we  can  obscure  not 

The  soul  which  burns  within,  that  we  will  dwell 

Beside  it,  like  a  vain  loud  multitude 

Vexing  the  self-content  of  wisest  men  ; 

That  v^'e  will  be  dread  thought  beneath  thy  brain, 

And  foul  desire  round  thine  astonished  heart, 

And  blood  within  thy  labj'rinthine  veins 

Crawling  like  agony. 

Prometheus. 

Whj',  ye  are  thus  now ; 
Yet  am  I  king  over  myself,  and  rule 
The  torturing  and  conflicting  throngs  within. 
As  Jove  rules  you  when  Hell  grows  mutinous. 

It  seems  incredible  that  this  passage  which 
has  in  it  the  dark  chasms  which  3'awn  down- 
ward into  blackness,  and  the  stalwart  moun- 
tain sides  of  the  rock-ribbed  Caucasus,  should 
have  been  created  in  the  same  soul  which 
wrote  the  dialogue  of  the  Fauns. 

49 


First  Faun. 
Canst  thou  iinaj:;inc  wlicrc  those  spirits  live 
Which  make  such  delicate  music  in  the  woods? 
We  haunt  within  the  least  frequented  caves 
And  closest  coverts,  and  we  know  these  wilds, 
Vet  never  meet  them,  thoujjjh  we  hear  them  oft: 
Where  may  they  hide  themselves? 

Second  Faun. 

'Tis  hard  to  tell : 
I  have  heard  those  more  skilled  in  spirits  say. 
The  Ijubljles,  which  the  enchantment  of  the  sun 
Sucks  from  the  pale,  faint  water-flowers  that  pave 
The  oozy  bottom  of  clear  lakes  and  pools. 
Are  the  pavilions  where  such  dwell  and  float 
Under  the  green  and  j^olden  atmosphere. 
Which  noon-tide  kindles  thro'  the  woven  leaves ; 
And  when  these  burst,  and  the  thin  fiery  air, 
The  which  they  breathed  within  those  lucent  domes 
Ascends  to  flow  like  meteors  thro'  the  night, 
They  ride  on  them,  and  rein  their  headlong  speed, 
And  bow  their  burning  crests,  and  glide  in  fire 
Under  the  waters  of  the  earth  again. 

First  Faun. 
If  such  live  thus,  have  others  other  lives. 
Under  pink  blossoms  or  within  the  bells 
Of  meadow  flowers,  or  folded  violets  deep, 
Or,  on  their  dying  odours  when  they  die, 
Or,  in  the  sunlight  of  the  sphered  dew  ? 

Second  Faun, 
hye,  many  more  which  we  may  well  divine. 
But  should  we  stay  to  speak,  noontide  would  come. 
And  thwart  Silenus  find  his  goats  undrawn. 
And  grudge  to  sing  those  wise  and  lovely  songs 

50 


Of  fate  and  chance,  and  God,  and  Chaos  old. 
And  Love,  and  the  chained  Titan's  woful  doom. 
And  how  he  shall  be  loosed,  and  make  the  earth 
One  brotherhood  :  delightful  strains  which  cheer 
Our  solitary  twilights,  and  which  charm 
To  silence  the  unenvving  nightingales. 

One  is  almost  constrained  to  accept  as  not 
too  strong  the  earlier  estimate  by  Robert 
Browning  of  a  man  who  has  so  distanced 
other  poets  in  the  swiftness,  directness  and 
strength  of  his  winged  flight.  In  his  tribute 
to  Shelley  as  man  and  poet  Browning  says : 
"There  is  surely  enough  of  the  work  of 
Shelley  to  be  known  enduringl^-  among  men, 
and,  I  believe,  to  be  accepted  of  God,  as 
human  work  may ;  and  around  the  imperfect 
proportions  of  such,  the  most  celebrated  pro- 
ductions of  ordinary  art  must  arrange  them- 
selves as  inferior  illustrations."  Thus  the 
most  famous  modem  poet  speaks  of  one  who 
has  girded  the  loins  of  sorrow  with  sustain- 
ing love.  "Love  taught  grief  to  fall  like 
music  from  his  tongue." 

Shellej^  had  not  yet  reached  his  thirtieth 
year  when  the  end  came  —  when  he  was 

51 


Made  one  with  nature, 

A  portion  of  the  loveliness 
Which  once  he  made  more  lovely. 

That  was  a  bitter  day  to  the  little  group 
who  had  watched  Shelley's  boat  go  out  to 
sea,  when  the  sea  and  boat  together  were 
shut  from  view  by  the  curtain  of  storm  which 
dropped  between  them.  No  one  will  know 
how  that  frail  boat  went  down  and  wrecked 
the  frailer  freight  it  carried.  The  tidings  for 
which  the  Mediterranean  shores  were  scanned 
for  days  came  at  last,  and  Shelley  in  his 
shroud  of  seaweed  lay  on  the  beach.  You 
know  the  rest;  —  how,  as  seemed  fitting,  he 
was  laid  upon  a  burial  of  flame  (a  human 
flower  such  as  he  must  not  know  corruption), 
how  the  solitary  sea  bird  flew  back  and  forth 
above  the  brightness  of  the  fire,  like  an 
escaped  soul  seeing  the  cage  consume;  how 
Leigh  Hunt  and  Trelawny  watched  all  that 
was  mortal  pass  into  ashes,  and  B3'ron,  un- 
able to  endure  an  irony  greater  than  his  own, 
turned  his  back  upon  the  funeral  pyre  and 
plunged  into  the  sea  to  reach  his  boat.  When 

52 


Mary  Shelley  died  a  copy  of  the  Pisa  edition 
of  Adonais  was  found  among  her  treasures. 
They  had  wondered  what  had  been  done  with 
the  heart  of  Shelley,  which  Trelawny  had 
snatched  from  the  fire.  They  opened  the 
Adonais  volume,  and  "at  the  page  which 
tells  how  death  is  swallowed  up  in  immor- 
tality, was  found,  under  a  silken  covering,  the 
embrowned  ashes,  now  shrunk  and  withered, 
which  she  had  secretly  treasured." 

Let  Shelley  add  to  this  imperfect  por- 
traiture his  own  in  the  Adonais  —  the  elegy 
upon  Keats,  beside  whom  his  ashes  lie  in  the 
cemetery  in  Rome ;  a  spot  of  which  he  said : 
"It  might  make  one  in  love  with  death,  to 
think  that  he  should  be  buried  in  so  sweet  a 
place!" 

Midst  others  of  less  note,  came  one  frail  form, 
A  phantom  among  men;  companionless, 
As  the  last  cloud  of  an  expiring  storm 
Whose  thunder  is  its  knell ;  he,  as  I  guess, 
Has  gazed  on  nature's  naked  lovliness, 
Actaeon-like,  and  now  he  fled  astray 
With  feeble  steps  o'er  the  world's  wilderness, 
And  his  own  thoughts,  along  that  rugged  way, 
Pursued,  like  raging  hounds  their  father  and  their 
prey. 

53 


A  pard-like  spirit,  beautiful  and  swift  — 
A  love  —  in  desolation  masked;  —  a  power 
Girt  round  with  weakness;  —  it  can  scarce  uplift 
The  weight  of  the  superincumbent  hour  ; 
It  is  a  dying  lamp,  a  falling  shower, 
A  breaking  billow; — even  whilst  we  speak 
Is  it  not  broken  ?    On  the  withering  flower 
The  killing  sun  smiles  briglitly  :  on  a  cheek 
The  life  can  burn  in  blood,  even  while  the  heart  may 
break. 


54 


II. 

AN  ILLUvSTRATED  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

of  the  Early  Writings  of 
PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY 


THE  FACSIMILES  ARE  REPRODUCED  FROM 
THE  ORIGINALS  IN  THE  COLLECTION  OF 
MR.  HARRY  B.  SMITH  OF  NEW  YORK 


Note — The  bibliographical  notes,  in  this  volume,  are 
taken,  for  the  most  part,  from  The  Shelley  Library,  an 
Essay  in  Bibliography,  by  Mr.  H.  Buxton  Forman,  pub- 
lished by  Reeves  &  Turner,  London,  1886.  Where  access 
to  the  rarer  Shelleys  could  be  obtained,  these  extracts 
have  been  carefully  verified. 

Descriptions  of  other  works  of  Shelley  are  not  added 
as  these  are  more  frequently  found  and  more  readily  iden- 
tified. 


IRr: 


ZASTROZZI, 


A  ROMANCE. 


BY 


P.    B.    S. 


"That  their  God 

Miy  prove  Uieir  foe,  and  with  repenting  hand 
Aboliih  hn  own  worki— Thi-)  would  nirpaM 
Common  rrvengc. 

fARADHS  LOST. 


LONDO  N: 


fAlt4TC0    FOR    O.    WILRIE    AND    J.    ROBINSONj 
■)7,    FATEHKOS'fEh    BOW. 


1810. 


ZASTROZZI. 

Zastrozzi,  which  appears  to  be  the  first 
work  of  Shellej^  which  can  be  called  a  book,  is 
a  duodecimo  volume,  consisting  of  ^-title, 
Zastrozzi,  \  a  Romance,  with  imprint  at  foot, 
Printed  by  S.  Hamilton,  Weybridge,  title- 
page  as  given  below,  and  252  pages  of  text 
with  the  head-line  Zastrozzi  throughout. 

ZASTROZZI, 

A   ROMANCE. 


BY 

P.  B.  S. 


That  their  God 

May  prove  their  foe,  and  Avith  repenting  hand 
Abolish  his  own  works — This  would  surpass 
Common  revenge. 

PARADISE  LOST. 


LONDON : 

PRINTED  FOR  G.  WILKIE  AND  J.  ROBINSON, 
57,  PATERNOSTER  ROW. 

1810. 


It  appears  to  have  been  issued  in  blue 
boards  backed  with  drab,  bearing  the  label 
"ZASTROZZI.  I  A  ROMANCE.  I    Price  Ss." 

It  is  said  to  have  been  published  on  the  5th 
of  June,  1810,  and  advertized  in  The  Times  on 
the  5th  and  12th,  but  a  letter  to  Graham 
from  Shelle}^  dated  Eton,  April  1,  1810,  and 
another  dated  May  29  indicate  that  the  book 
was  to  appear  immediateh',  or  had  appeared. 
Shelley  was  in  his  eighteenth  j'-ear. 

ORIGINAL  POETRY  BY  VICTOR  AND 
CAZIRE 

is  the  second  book  of  Shelley ;  of  this  no  copy 
was  known  to  be  extant  until  1897  when  a 
single  cop3^  came  to  light.  It  appears  to 
have  been  given  before  binding  to  Rev. 
Charles  Grove,  brother  of  Harriet;  when 
discovered  it  was  bound  up  with  some  other 
pamphlets.  This  very  rare  item  is  now  in 
the  possession  of  Mr.  Thomas  J.  Wise  (See 
article  in  Bookman,  December  1900,  by  L.  S. 
Livingston.)  The  fact  that  Shelley  had  issued 
in  the  Autumn  of  1810  a  volume  entitled 
Original  Poetry  by  Victor  and  Cazire,  though 

60 


made  public  in  1826,  was  not  generally 
known  to  Shelley  students  until  Mr.  Garnett, 
having  discovered  it  in  1859,  made  it  known 
in  June  1860  through  Macmillan's  Magazine. 
Numbers  I  to  IX  of  Stockdalc's  Budget  (13  De- 
cember, 1826,  to  7  February,  1827)  contain  a 
series  of  articles  by  Stockdale  headed  with 
Shelley's  name.  From  the  first  of  these  it 
appears  that,  in  the  Autumn  of  1810,  Shelley 
called  upon  Mr.  J.  J.  Stockdale,  publisher,  of 
Pall  Mall,  and  arranged  with  him  for  the 
issue  of  a  book  printed  at  Horsham  under  the 
title  quoted,  and  that,  on  the  17th  of  Sep- 
tember, 1810,  Stockdale  received  1480  copies 
of  the  book,  "a  thin  ro3^al  8vo.  volume."  The 
book  was  advertized  in  The  Morning  Chron- 
icle for  September  18,  in  The  Morning 
Post,  September  19,  and  in  The  Times  for 
October  12,  1810. 

According  to  Stockdale,  about  a  hundred 
copies  had  been  put  into  circulation,  when  he 
discovered  in  regard  to  some  of  the  verses 
what  a  caustic  contemporary  review  in  The 
Poetical  Register — a  review  which  conclu- 
sively establishes  the  existence  of  the  book  — 

61 


'  alleges  of  all,  that  they  were  not  original. 

Shelley  seems  to  have  had  a  real  collabor- 
ator; and  Stockdale  found  out  that  one  of 
the  poems  (doubtless  of  "Cazire")  had 
already  appeared  as  the  work  of  M.G.Lewis. 
He  communicated  with  Shelley,  and  the  book 
was  at  once  suppressed.  Mr.  Garnett  con- 
jectures that  Cazire  was  the  same  colleague 
who  is  said  to  share  with  Shelle^^  the  produc- 
tion of  Zastrozzi,  his  cousin  Harriet  Grove. 
By  others  Shelley's  sister  Elizabeth  is  sup- 
posed to  be  the  joint-author  with  him  of  these 
poems.  This  view  is  supported  b3^  a  reference 
in  Hogg's  life  of  Shelley.  The  wording  of  the 
title-page  cannot  be  reproduced,  but  the  ad- 
vertisement in  the  Morning  Post  of  Sept.  19, 
1810,  is  as  follows: 

This  day  is  published,  in  royal  Svo.,  price  4s  in  boards, 

ORIGINAL  POETRY, 
By  Victor  and  Cazire, 

Sold  by  Stockdale,  Junior,  No.  41,  Pall  Mall. 

Though  advertized  and  remembered  by 
Stockdale  as  a  royal  octavo,  the  book  was 
review^ed  as  a  small  octavo. 

62 


POSTHUMOUS   FRAGMENTS 

OF 

MARGARET  NICHOLSON; 

BEING    POEMS    FOUND    AMONGST    THE    PAPERS 

OF  THAT  NOTED  FEMALE  WHO 

ATTEMPTED  THE  LIFE  OF 

THE  KING  IN  1786. 


EDITED   BY 


3®1bm    lf1l^ZlD1IC^®1R- 

OXFORD  : 
PRINTED  AND  SOLD  BY  J.  MUNDAY. 


1810. 

This  is  an  interesting  and  much  debated 
pamphlet.  It  is  a  quarto,  consisting  of  fly- 
title,  Posthumous  Fragments  \  of  \  Margaret 
Nicholson,  title,  a  third  leaf  bearing  the  "Ad- 
vertisement," and  text  pages  7  to  29.  At  the 
foot  of  page  29  is  the  imprint  Munday, 
Printer,  Oxford. 

There  have  been  at  least  two  reproductions. 
Mr.  H.  Buxton  Forman  says  af  the  first: 

"Some  years  ago  a  so-called  fac-simile  of 
the  Posthumous  Fragments  was  issued  with- 
out any  intentional  indication  that  it  was  not 
the  original.    *     *     *     *     But  for  the  benefit 

63 


of  the  unwary  it  maj'-  be  set  down  that  the 
})apcr  of  the  reprint  is  thicker  and  stiffer  than 
that  of  the  original ;  that  the  two  long  rules 
in  the  title-])age  above  and  below  the  words 
edited  by  John  Fit  zvict  or  are  straight  rules  in 
the  reprint  and  fancy  rules  in  the  original ; 
that  at  page  8  of  the  reprint,  line  12,  baleful 
is  misprinted  hateful;  that  in  the  heading  of 
the  poem  beginning  at  page  11  the  word 
Ravaillac  is  transferred  in  the  reprint  to  the 
third  line,  being  in  the  second  in  the  original; 
and  that  the  '  French  rules '  which  are  of  the 
plain  form  in  the  original  are  of  two  less 
simple  forms  in  the  'fac-simile.'  " 
Mr.  Forman's  own  reprint  bears  this  title : 

POSTHUMOUS  FRAGMENTS  OF  MAR- 
GARET NICHOLSON. I  Edited  by  H. 
Buxton  Forman,  |  and  printed  for  private 
distriljution.|      mdccclxxvii. 

This  reprint  consists  of  title  as  above,  a 
second  leaf  bearing  a  bibliographical  note,  flj'- 
title,  title-page,  and  "Advertisement"  as  in  the 
original,  and  pages  11  to  24  of  text.  The 
issue  was  restricted  to  50  copies  on  ordinary 

64 


ST.    IRVYNE; 


on, 


THE    ROSICRUCIAy 


V. 


A  ROMANCE. 


BY 

A  GENTLEMAN" 

OF    THE    l.Si\T.ivElTY    OF    OXIuIlD 


LONDOy.- 

PRINTED    FOR   J.    J.    STOCKDAL£. 

41,    PALjL    MaLL. 

1811. 


paper,  25   on  Whatman's  hand-niade  paper, 
and  5  on  vellum. 

ST.  IRVYNE. 

St.Irvyne  is  a  duodecimo  volume  consisting 
of  fly-title,  St.  Irvyne ;\  or,\  the  Rosicriician, 
with  imprint  at  foot  of  the  verso,  S.  GosncU, 
Printer,  Little  Queen  Street,  London,  title- 
page,  and  236  pages  of  text,  with  head-lines 
throughout,  St.  Irvyne  ;  or,  on  the  left-hand, 
the  Rosicrucian  on  the  right.  At  the  foot  of 
page  236  is  Printed  by  S.  Gosnell,  Little 
Queen  Street,  London.    The  title  reads: 

ST.  IRVYNE 

OR, 

THE    ROSICRUCIAN  : 

A  ROMANCE. 


BY 

A  GENTLEMAN 

OF  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF   OXFORD. 


LONDON: 

PRINTED  FOR  J.  J.  STOCKDALE, 

41,  PALL  MALL. 

1811. 


Copies  are  frequenth'  found  made  up  ap- 
parently from  the  original  sheets,  with  a  fresh 
title-page,  worded  preciseh^  as  the  original 
title-page  is  worded,  but  with  the  date  1822. 
The  copies  made  up  in  1822  have  a  back  label 
which  reads  "ST.  IRVYNE;|  or,  the|  Rosi- 
cnicmn.\  H  IROIUHUCCJ  Price  4s. |  Boards.] 
1822." 

THE  NECESSITY  OF  ATHEISM. 

Shelley's  next  extant  publication  after  St. 
Irvyne  appears  to  be  the  tract  which  led  to 
his  expulsion  from  Oxford. 

THE 
NECESSITY 

OF 

ATHEISM. 


Quod  clara  et  perspicua  denionstratione  careat 
pro  vcro  habere  mens  oninino  nequis  huniana. 


Bacon  de  Augment.  Scient. 


WORTHING: 
Printed  by  E.  &  W.  Phillips. 

Sold  in   London  and  Oxford. 


It  is  a  single  foolscap  sheet,  folded  in  octavo, 
and  consists  of  fly-title,  ^bCl  1FlCCC90it^  Ot 
HtbCiSni,  titlepage  as  given  above,  a  third 
leaf  bearing  the  "Advertisement,"  the  text 
occupying  pages  7  to  13,  and  finally  a  blank 
leaf.  The  imprint  at  the  end  is  Phillips, 
Printers,  Worthing.  There  are  no  head-lines ; 
and  the  pages  (8  to  13)  are  numbered  cen- 
trally in  Arabic  figures. 

A  POETICAL  ESSAY  ON  THE  EXISTING 
STATE  OF  THINGS. 

A  Poetical  Essay  on  the  Existing  State  of 
Things  is  said  to  have  been  published  b3^  Shel- 
ley for  the  benefit  of  Peter  Finnert^^  im- 
prisoned for  a  libel  on  Castlereagh.  There 
is  enough  evidence  of  such  a  poem  having 
been  published  to  justify  its  insertion  in  a 
Shellej'  bibliography,  though  no  copy  is 
known.  That  Shelley  was  interested  in  Fin- 
nerty  is  shown  by  the  paragraph  about  that 
patriot  and  journalist  in  the  Address  to  the 
Irish  People ;  but  Mr.  MacCarthy  discovered 
that  Shelley  subscribed  to  a  fund  for  Finner- 

67 


ty's  benefit,  the  subscription  being  acknow- 
ledged in  The  Oxford  Herald  for  the  2nd  of 
March  1811 ;  while,  in  the  number  for  the 
9th  of  March  1811,  Mr.  MacCarthy  found 
the  following  advertisement  "filling  a  space 
of  about  three  inches,  and  printed  in  the  most 
conspicuous  part  of  the  paper,  at  the  head 
of  the  first  column":  — 

Literature 

Just  published,  Price  Two  Shillings, 

A  POETICAL  ESSAY 

ON  THE 

Existing  State  of  Things 

And  Famine  at  her  ninniNG  wasted  wide 
The  Wretched  Land,  till  in  the  Public  way, 
Promiscuous  where  the  dead  and  dying  lay, 
Dogs  fed  on  human  bones  in  the  open  light  of  day. 

Curse  of  Kehama. 

BY   A 

GENTLEMAN  of  the  University  of  Oxford. 

For  assisting  to  maintain  in  Prison 

MR.  PETER  FINNERTY 
imprisoned  for  a  libel. 


London:  Sold  by  B.  Crosby  and  Co., 

AND  all  other  BOOKSELLERS. 
1811. 


AN    ADDRESS, 


TO  THE 


I  K  I  S  H    PEOPLE. 


Bv  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 


ADVERTISEMENT. 

Tkt  liivist  fmiUi  ptkt  ii  /<•.'  Qtt  •'lii  fulUcatin,  ticauii  it  it  ih  ir'ention  of 
tki  Author  11  eiutkti  in  Int  mndj  if  the  Iriih  f-:^',  a  inrwUdtie  cf  ticir 
TiM ilaie,  ttPimarity }-t!n:-r.g  off  Ikt  tvili  of  that  stale,  oxd' suggming 
raicnal  nucni  cj  remtJjf. — Ca/.sU--  Emma f alien ,  nnd  a  Rtftal  of  tk* 
Vnian  Act,  (ikt  ItlUr.  the  ir.i:l  luaafui  mpxe  ihat  EnglokJ  ever  wiildcd 
c  vtr  till  ninrj  tf  fidlin  IrtlanJ,)  burg  Ireatid  J  m  ^t  jolUwnt^  cdJrtu,'^ 
a:  grievancci  •a.i;Vi  umurrim'if  nr..i  re.'iUilin  maj  rtr-.rvt,  an.!  es.'cdatint 
re  UuctcJ  j:itA  pea:sa'-\r  firnnui,  'jetngtarnmlj  reiemmtndcd,  as  mtani 
;;r  er'.btiy.n^  that  *.;,»«-ry/  and frmr.tsi,  -wlKi  must fiiu^lf  be  i::i:ti'ful. 


*^3yT"-  '■  ^?^ 


LINES, 
ADDRESSED 

TO 

HIS    ROYAL    HIGHNESS 

THE 

PRINCE    OF   WALES, 

ON    HIS 

Being  appointc^  IRcoent. 


BY  PHILOPATRIA,  JUN. 

SERUS  IN   CCELUM   KEDEAS  ;    DIUQUE 
LCETUS  INTERSIS   I'OPULO   QUIRINI. 

Horace,  Ode  2.  Lib.  1. 

LONDON: 
PRINTED  FOR  SHERWOOD,  NEELY,  AND  JONES, 

PATERNOSTER-ROW  ; 
AND  SOLD   BY   ALL  OTHER    BOOKSELLERS. 


1811. 

This  octavo  pamphlet  consists  of  title-page, 
4  pages  of  Preface  headed  To  the  Public,  and 
18  pages  of  text  containing  fourteen  lines  in  a 
full  page.  There  is  a  pastoral-musical  orna- 
ment at  the  head  of  page  1,  repeated  at  the 
end  of  the  poem.  At  the  back  of  the  title-page 
is  the  imprint  Hamelin  and  Seyfang,  Printers, 
Queen  Street,  Cbeapside. 

69 


AN    ADDRESS, 

TO  THE 

IRISH  PEOPLE, 

BY  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 

ADVERTISEMENT. 


The  lowest  possible  price  is  set  on  this  publication,  be- 
cntisc  it  is  the  intention  of  the  Author  to  awaken  in 
the  minds  of  the  Irish  poor,  a  knowledge  of  their  real 
state,  summarily  pointing  out  the  evils  of  that  state, 
and  suggesting-  rational  means  of  remedy.  —  Catholic 
Emancipation,  and  a  Repeal  of  the  Union  Act,  {the 
latter,  the  most  successful  engine  that  England  ever 
wielded  over  the  misery  of  fallen  Ireland,)  being 
treated  of  in  the  following  address,  as  grievances 
which  unanimity  and  resolution  may  remove,  and 
associations  conducted  with  peaceable  firmness,  being 
earnestly  recommended,  as  means  for  embodying 
that  unanimity  and  firmness,  which  must  finally  be 
successful. 


H)ublin : 


1812. 
Price  —  5d. 


An  Address  to  the  Irish  People  is  an  octavo 
pamphlet,  consisting  of  title-page  and  22 
pages  of  text,  including  the  postscript,  which 

70 


occupies  the  last  leaf.  It  is  printed  on  three 
half-sheets,  the  title-page  being  the  final  leaf 
of  the  last  half-sheet,  and  doubled  back  over 
the  first  two  half-sheets.  The  pages  have  no 
head-lines,  but  are  numbered  centrallj^:  and 
no  printer's  name  appears. 

PROPOSALvS  FOR  AN  ASSOCIATION. 
The  Proposals  for  an  Association  appeared 
Monday,  the  2nd  of  March,  1812,  according 
to  MacCarthy  ( Shelley' s  Early  Life,  page  1 72 ) . 

PROPOSALS 

FOR    AN 

ASSOCIATION 

OF  THOSE 

PHILANTHROPISTS, 

WHO  CONVINCED  OF  THE  INADEQUACY  OF  THE 
MORAL  AND  POLITICAL  STATE  OF  IRELAND 
TO  PRODUCE  BENEFITS  WHICH  ARE  NEVER- 
THELESS ATTAINABLE  ARE  WILLING  TO 
UNITE  TO  ACCOMPLISH  ITS  REGENERATION. 


BY 
PERCY     BYSSHE     SHELLEY. 

Dublin : 

PRINTED  BY  I.  ETON.  WINETAVERN-STREET. 


It  is  an  octavo  pamphlet,  consisting  of  title- 
page  as  given  above,  undated,  and  18  pages 
of  text,  without  head-lines,  but  numbered 
centrally. 

The  pamphlet  is  printed  in  the  roughest 
style,  with  the  worst  possible  ink,  on  the 
worst  possible  paper;  and  manj^  letters  are 
dropped  ;  but  it  is  not  particularly  incorrect, 
except  in  regard  to  the  words  philanthropy, 
philanthropic,  &c.,  in  which,  oftener  than  not, 
there  is  an  h  after  the  p  in  the  last  syllable. 

QUEEN  MAB. 

The  editio  princeps  of  Queen  Mah  is  a  crown 
octavo  volume  consisting  of  title-page,  Dedi- 
cation, pages  1  to  122  of  text,  fly-title  Notes, 
and  pages  125  to  240  of  Notes.  Shelley  did 
not  publish  the  book  in  the  usual  wa}-,  but 
printed  it  privately.  It  was  printed  on  fine 
paper,  in  the  belief  that,  though  it  would 
not  be  read  by  the  aristocrats  of  that  day, 
it  might  be  by  their  sons  and  daughters ;  and 
the  chances  are  that  not  a  copy,  of  the  250 
said  to  have  been  printed,  was  wasted.  Mr. 
Forman  declares  that  he  never  saw  a  copy 

72 


()ri:KN    MAB; 

« 

I'  II  1  I.OSOI'  II  K'A  I.     IM»1-:.M 
wnii  xoTKs. 

n  r 

i-KUcv  i;vssiii;  suKr.i.i'.v. 


K<  r.ASKZ  i.infamk; 

Ari^  VirruUim  por:kz^f>  loca.  ntitliurf  niilo 
'I'r.t*  »<*I«>;  jnvat  inu-;;r'»n  ;io-eil«:ic  foultiB  ; 
A'.|iir  hiutiro:  juvat>|iia  uuyf>9  iloicrperc  tl-irci. 
•  ■  •  •  • 

I'litlv  priq*  iiiilli  VfUribt  tcmpora  tnutai. 
rrnitnrfi  'juixl  tii.iKt>:*  ili>fv«  dt  r«'l»u»  ;  t-t  nrctis 
I'.'-Ui;i«uun>  ki.iiiio*  iitxjla  )'X>i>Ucrr  pirr^'O. 

/.W'-it.  lit*.  IV. 


I.nN  1)1 1\  : 

iiM.N  1  Ki)  isv  r.   i;.  Hiii:i-J-i:v. 


with  a  printed  label,  and  has  no  reason  to 
think  there  was  one.  The  title-page  runs 
thus: 

OUEEN   MAB; 

A 

PHILOSOPHICAL    POEM: 

WITH  NOTES. 

HY 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 


ECRASEZ  L'INFAME! 

Correspondance  de  Voltaire. 


Avia  Pieridum  peragro  loca,  nullius  ante 

Trita  solo  ;  juvat  integros  accedere  fonteis ; 

Atque  haurire :  juratque  novos  decerpere  flores. 
*  *  *  *  « 

Unde  prius  nulli  velarint  tempora  musae. 
Primutn  quod  magnis  doceo  de  rebus ;  et  arctis 
Religionum  animos  nodis  exsolvere  pergo. 

Lucret.  lib.  iv. 


Aof  7r«  fw,  K(u  Koafiov  iciv?/aij. 

Archimedes. 


LONDON : 

PRINTED  BY  P.  B.  SHELLEY, 

23,  Chapel  Street,  Grosvenor  Square. 

1813. 


mxccn  noabJ    by|    percy  bysshe 

SHELLEY.  I     XO^^O^:l     PRINTED  AND 

PUBLISHED    BY  \Y.    CLARK, |    201,   STRAND. 
1821. 

This  is  the  first  published  edition  so  far  as 
can  be  determined. 

This  edition,  an  octavo,  usually  consists  of 
title-page,  pages  3  to  89of  text,  flj'-title  Notes 
with  note  by  Clark  at  the  back,  pages  93  to 
182  of  Notes,  and  a  leaf  bearing  on  the  recto 
six  advertisements. 

QUEEN  MAB;|  a|  pbtlOSOpbtCal  IPOCIU.I 
BY  I  PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY.]  NEW 

YORK: I    PRINTED     BY    BALDWIN     AND     CO. 
CORNER  0F|    CHATHAM  STREET.  |      1821. 

This  is  a  duodecimo  consisting  of  10  pages 
of  unpaged  preliminary  matter  beside  the 
title,  a  blank  leaf,  pages  3  to  88  of  text,  pages 
89  to  181  of  Notes,  and  one  page  of  adver- 
tisements. Some  copies  have  an  engraved 
title-page  in  addition  to  the  printed  one: 
(See  facsimile)  after  Shelley's  name  this  has  a 
caduceus    and    the     imprint    "New    York,| 


«' 


/3^ 


^RCSu-m^tkrV 


"^jrA////-///  - 


'J 


^^ 


ssss  iwmmt. 


<r'^^|^^k,V 


; 


3- 


PaiNTED  &  soir>  BT  J.Baxdwiij-. 

CORKER    Ot,  CHATHAJC    STliEF.T. 

—  1821— 
Price  76  Gents. 

<f  -  rr . 


J 


Printed  &  Sold  By  J.   Baldwin,  |  Corner  of 
Chatham  Street.|     1821. |     Price  75  cents." 
And  in  some  copies  this  is  the  only  title-page, 
while  others  have  the  words  Philosophical 
Poem  in  the  printed  title  in  Roman  letters  in- 
stead of  Old  English.      After  the  title  or  titles 
comes  a  Preface  of  three  pages  signed   "A 
Pantheist."    The  writer  says  he  got  a  copy  of 
the  private  edition  from  Shelley  in  the  spring 
of  1815,  being  then  in  England.    He  adverts 
to  the  prosecution  of  Clark  by  the  Society'  for 
the  Suppression  of  Vice,  says  the  little  edition 
has  been  done  for  "cheapness  and  portabil- 
ity,"   recommends    the    octavo    edition    for 
libraries  as  if  he  knew  it  was  still  to  be  had, 
and  reprints  Shelley's  letter  to  The  Examiner 
out  of  "justice  to  him."      After  this  letter 
comes    an   "Ode    to  the  Author    of   'Queen 
Mab.'"      This    "A     Pantheist"     says    was 
written  bj"  a  friend  of  his  early  in  1815 :  it  is 
signed  "R.  C.  F."     Then  comes  an  Argument 
said  to  be  from  "a  Polemical  Magazine  pub- 
lished in  London  in  1815."    At  the  end  of 
this  extract  the  source  is  specified  as  "Theo- 
logical Enquirer,  by  Erasmus  Perkins." 

75 


Mr.  Buxton  Forman  says :  "  The  book  is  a 
substantial  reprint,  but  not  a  perfectly  accu- 
rate one.  It  is  not  easy,  perhaps  not  possible, 
to  decide  whether  it  is  a  reprint  of  Clark's 
edition  or  of  Shelley's;  for  there  are  details  in 
which  it  varies  from  both ;  but  I  lean  to  the 
supposition  that  it  was  reprinted  from 
Clark's.  I  am  wholly  sceptical  about  the 
bona  fides  of  the  imprint,  and,  judging 
from  the  general  appearance,  should  think 
the  book  was  printed  in  England,  with  an 
American  imprint  on  account  of  the  libel  pros- 
ecutions against  publishers  oi  Queen  MabJ' 

AN  ADDRESS  TO  THE  PEOPLE  ON  THE 

DEATH  OF  THE  PRINCESS 

CHARLOTTE. 

Mr.  Buxton  Forman  thus  describes  this 
curious  pamphlet:  "As  far  as  I  have  yet 
been  able  to  discover,  no  copj'  of  the  original 
Address  to  the  People  on  the  Death  of  the 
Princess  Charlotte  is  extant;  but  there  is  a 
print  bearing  at  the  back  of  the  title  the 
words  Reprinted  for  Thomas  Rodd,  2^  Great 

76 


Newport  Street,  — evidence,  bye  the  bye, 
which  fraudulent  book-sellers  occasionally 
suppress  with  the  aid  of  a  knife,  so  as  to  offer 
the  tract  as  an  'original  copy.'  This  reprint 
is  an  octavo  of  two  half-sheets  'stabbed' 
together  without  any  wrapper :  it  consists  of 
title-page  as  given  below  and  pages  3  to  16 
of  text,  in  eleven  numbered  paragraphs,  and 
has  at  foot  of  the  last  page  the  single-line  im- 
print Compton  &  Ritchie,  Printers,  Middle 
Street,  Cloth  Fair,  London.  The  pamphlet  is 
printed  in  large  type  set  closely,  without 
head-lines,  and  having  the  pages  numbered 
centrally." 

"  WE  PITY  THE  PLUMAGE,  BUT  FORGET 
THE  DYING  BIRD." 

AN 

ADDRESS  TO  THE  PEOPLE 

ON 

The  Death  of  the  Princess  Charlotte. 


BY 

ITbe  Mcrmlt  of  fioarlow. 


LAON  AND  CYTHNA. 
[The  Revolt  of  Islam.] 

Mr.  Forman  gives  the  following  interesting 
account  of  the  transition  from  the  earliest 
to  the  later  form  of  this  book : 

"The  editio princepsof  Laon  and  Cythna  is 
an  octavo  volume,  consisting  of  title-page,  a 
blank  leaf,  preface  pages  v  to  xxii,  fly-title  to 
the  Dedication,  with  quotation  from  Chap- 
man's Byron's  Conspiracy  (Act  III),  Dedica- 
tion pages  XXV  to  xxxii,  fl^^-title  Laon  and 
Cythna  with  quotation  from  Pindar*  and 
270  pages  of  text.  I  have  heard  of  a  copy 
containing  advertisements  dated  October 
1817,  including  one  of  Laon  and  Cythna  it- 
self. The  label  reads  thus:  'LAONj  and| 
CYTHNA. I  10s.  6c/.  Boards.'  The  title- 
page  is  as  follows  : 


*This  fly-title  is  doubtless  extremely  scarce.  It  prob- 
ably got  lost  through  being  a  separate  leaf,  with  a 
separate  signature,  d,  coming  in  between  two  complete 
sheets, —unfortunately  at  that  point  where  the  Roman 
numerals  of  the  preliminary  matter  end,  so  that  its 
absence  makes  no  obvious  hiatus  to  be  discovered  by  the 
binder. 

78 


Xaon  ant)  d^tbna; 

OK, 

THE    REVOLUTION 

OF 

THE  GOLDEN  CITY: 
A  Vision  of  the  Nineteenth  Century. 

IN  THE  STANZA   OF  STENSER. 


BY 

PERCY  B.  SHELLEY. 


AOS  nOY  2TS2  KAI  K02M0N  KINH2i2. 

ARCHIMEDES. 


LONDON: 

PRINTED    FOR    SHERWOOD,    NEELY,    &    JONES, 

PATERNOSTER-ROW;  AND  C.  AND 

J.  OLLIER,  WELBECK-STREET : 

By  B.  M'Millan,  Bow-Street,  Coveut-Garden. 


1818. 

Written  in  the  summer  of  1817,  the  book 
was  printed  in  the  latter  part  of  that  year, 
the  title-page  being  post-dated  as  usual ;  but 
before  it  was  regularly  issued,  it  was  sup- 
pressed for  the  purpose  of  altering  the  text  in 
some  particulars  and  changing  the  title. 

79 


The  Revolt  of  Islam,  being  made  up  from 
the  same  sheets  with  a  fresh  title-page  and  26 
cancel-leaves,  the  same  bibliographical  par- 
ticulars apply,  except  that  the  preface,  having 
the  final  paragraph  cancelled,  ends  on  page 
xxi,  and  the  fly-title  with  quotation  from 
Pindar  bears  the  words  The  Revolt  of  Islam. 
Some  few  copies  of  The  Revolt  of  Islam  bear 
the  date  1817,  instead  of  1818.  The  same 
sheets  were  used  again  in  1829,  with  a  third 
title-page ;  and  some  copies  of  that  issue  con- 
tain the  original  Laon  and  Cythna  text,  with- 
out the  changed  leaves  printed  in  The  Revolt. 

ROSALIND  AND  HELEN  &c. 
RosaUnd  and  Helen,  &c.,  printed  in  the 
spring  of  1819,  is  an  octavo  volume  consist- 
ing of  fly-title  Rosalind  and  Helen,  title-page, 
2  pages  of  Preface  (called  "Advertisement"), 
contents,  fly-title  Rosalind  and  Helen,  a  Mod- 
ern Eclogue,  and  text  pages  3  to  92.  On  the 
back  of  the  first  fly-title  are  advertisements  of 
The  Revolt  of  Islam  and  Alastor,  and  also  an 
imi)rint,  C.  H.  Reynell,  Broad-street,  Golden- 
square,  London.    The  title-page  is  as  follows : 

80 


Hiion  atxtf  ^st'^na; 


OB, 


THE  REVOLUTION 


THi:  (;oj.dj:n  c-itv 


3  Clision  oitbc  finmccmb  Centura. 


IN    Illf,    -T\N/\  iir  Sl'ENSKK. 


iir 


J'0(  V  B.  >fii:i,Li:v. 


/-0,V/>O.V; 

tOM  ,  A.Nu  c.  A.Nr.  J.  oLtiKR.  w iu.BK(  K -vr.u.kT: 


ROSALIND  AND  HELEN, 

A  MODERN  ECLOGUE; 

WITH 

OTHER  POEMS: 

BY 

PERCY  BYSSHE  SHELLEY. 

LONDON : 
PRINTED  FOR  C.  AND  J.  OLLIER, 

VERE  STREET,  BOND  STREET. 
1819. 

Mrs.  Shelley  says  in  her  note  on  Poems  of 
1816  that  the  hymn  "was  conceived  during 
Shelley's  voyage  around  the  Lake  (Geneva) 
with  Lord  Byron."  It  is  to  this  period  we 
must  refer  Byron's  Prisoner  ofChillon. 

THE  CENCL 
The  first  edition  of  The  Cenci,  though  some- 
what wide  in  proportion  to  its  height  and 
approaching  in  shape  to  a  quarto,  is  in  reality 
an  octavo,  being  printed  on  half  sheets  of 
paper  folded  in  four.  It  consists  of  a  blank 
leaf  in  place  of  fly-title,  title-page,  Dedication 
pages  iii  to  v.  Preface  pages  vii  to  xiv,  fly-title 
The  Cenci  with  Dramatis  Personae  at  back, 

81 


and  pages  3  to  104  of  text,  with  head-lines 
The  Cenci  on  the  left  hand  and  Act  and  Scene 
on  the  right.  The  1)ack-label  reads  across, 
thus:  "THE I  CENCI. I  4s.  6d.  bdsr  The 
title  runs  thus : 

THE    CENCI. 
A  TRAGEDY, 

IN  FIVE  ACTS. 
By  PERCY  B.  SHELLEY. 

ITALY. 
Printed  for  C.  and  J.  Ollier 

VERB  STREET,  BOND  STREET. 

LONDON. 
1819. 


82 


THE   LITERARY  COLLECTOR   PRESS 
GREENWICH,  CONNECTICUT 


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